Oh, gentlemen, perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I’ve never been able to start or finish anything... Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has others which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But finally there are still others which a man is even afraid to tell himself...

Monday, March 24, 2014

No Apologies, Simply Blindness

There is a great divide between a very thin class of revolutionaries and the mainstream direction Egypt has taken. The gaps in Egypt are not just between the rich and poor, they’re not just between the classes but they seem to be in values too.

Recently, Pope Tawadros II, the Coptic Orthodox pope made a baffling statement. He said, “You want to talk about Human Rights while there is terror and crime?”

I would have imagined human right values to be more closely aligned with Christian values. I wonder how what it would have been like had Jesus said, “Don’t talk to me about Christian values during times of persecution.”

But the Christian church isn’t the only institution that has witnessed leadership in direct opposition to the values it ought to preach. Gaber Nassar, a lawyer and supposed Human Rights defender seems to be making similar mistakes. In an incident involving the mass sexual harassment of a female on campus, he blamed the girl for her ‘mistake’ of dressing inappropriately.

Such is the state of leaders of the Christian denomination and someone from the education sector. They’re not the only flawed leaders, in fact they are considered among the least scathed by accusations of corruption. But they fall short of the mark, they can perhaps be of use in medieval times, but not in today’s world.

Gaber Nassar later apologized for his mistake of blaming the girl and her attire for the incident. It wasn’t a very strong apology but it’s a start to a culture of apologies. In the same vein, Bassem Youssef apologized for ripping off an article in his weekly column, but Bassem is no official leader.In his apology he managed to give a lesson on how to apologize and what accountability means.

Leadership remains lacking in every sense. The head of the state that violates its constitution daily is the former head of the constitutional court, the police that’s meant to uphold the law break it every day. The head of the army that is meant to protect the borders and the constitution is sinking the army’s claws deeper into politics and the country’s economy and has tried to extend their expertise to medicine as well. The heads of religious institutions are diverging from core human values and delving into unprecedented modes of hypocrisy.

All of Egypt’s leadership is letting its future inhabitants down, yet there are no apologies, particularly from those that have harmed this country the most, simply blindness.

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“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”